Tag: Penn Rare
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The Wayfarer’s Prayer in manuscript: Karp BVIII.7
The Abraham J. and Deborah Karp Collection of Judaica at the Penn Libraries is in part a collection of manuscripts and pamphlets collected by the late Rabbi Dr. Abraham Jacob Karp (1921-2003). Upon cataloging multiple items of manuscript ephemera from the collection, one item caught my eye – something very uncommon. What I mean by…
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Lions on the Clock II: Six Owners, Five Marks of Provenance, One Book (and Two Lawsuits)
Lions are primarily pursuit predators, although “ambush behaviour has been observed … mainly during daylight when stalking prey is more difficult” (“Predatory Behaviour”). I presume this accounts for the way three more books from the press of sixteenth-century Swiss printer Nikolas Brylinger—he of the clock-watching lions—leapt out at me from the Kislak Center’s holdings after…
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Outstanding rabbinical provenance in the Kaplan Centre Collection, part 1: Ḳorban reshit (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1777)
This volume was formerly in the rare book collection of the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of Cape Town and donated to the Penn Libraries in 2019. There was a major figure in the world of rabbinic leaders of the Ashkenazic Jews – R. Aryeh-Leib Günzburg of Metz. He lived…
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Two Unrecorded Woodcuts from Urs Graf’s “F.M.S.” Cycle
In the spring of 2019 the Penn Libraries acquired for the Henry Charles Lea Library a German Hortulus animae or Seelengärtlein (BX2085 .S44 1515), a type of lay prayer book that enjoyed a brief burst of popularity in western Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century.1 The first known Hortulus animae—Latin for “little garden…
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Holiday Cards … and starting the new year with love … and pets!
It seems that regardless of religion, age, or tech saavy-ness, the end of the year is the time to send thoughts to your family and friends. Tons of archival collections have at least one or two holiday cards and it always delights me to see the bold colors and sparkly designs that were created to…
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“What a Morning!”: Illustrations of the Christmas Story in Black Spirituals by Ashley Bryan
In light of this holiday season, I wanted to share some of the wonderful original artwork from “What a Morning!: The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals,” a (Aladdin Paperbacks) illustrated by Ashley Bryan. The book consists of lyrics and piano accompaniment to black spirituals including “My Lord What A Morning,” “Mary Had A Baby,” “Go,…
Unique at Penn 